First Look: Google Checkout

Google's new online payment service launched today. Google Checkout offers secure transaction processing for people making purchases from stores on the web. Overall, it looks like a promising alternative for sellers who don't want to make the jump into expensive merchant accounts, and it offers some attractive features for buyers as well.

The early buzz on Google Checkout is that it's going to be a PayPal killer. While that isn't necessarily true, the Google Checkout service does offer a few advantages over PayPal for sellers — especially sellers enrolled in Google's AdWords search advertising program. If we were to name a target that Google is zeroing in on, the more accurate guess would be Amazon. Google Checkout rivals Amazon's 1-click shopping cart checkout system, and it offers a centralized place where users can track multiple purchases from multiple vendors. Amazon has a much wider array of goods for sale, but given Google's strong brand name and their reputation as a web innovator, they could build up the Google Checkout seller community rather quickly.

Right now, Google Checkout is U.S.-only. Buyers and sellers must have mailing addresses and billing addresses within the United States, and sellers must be based in the U.S. This is a shame, and hopefully Google will bring the service to international users soon.

When you search for products in Google and Froogle, a small shopping cart logo appears in the some of the sponsored AdWord links on the side of the page. These are stores that use Google Checkout. Big name stores like Levis, Starbucks and BlueFly are already using Google Checkout, but there are also some smaller merchants like Skates on Haight. Here's a full list.

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